Silicon Valley lawmaker says stop the monkey business

State Assemblymember Alex Lee is the hottest victim of adverse campaign monkey organization.

About the very last number of months, the Housing Providers for Liable Methods political action committee (PAC) has expended approximately $1 million on mailers, adverts and texts opposing Lee—about a 3rd of what the PAC has used this year. The PAC is mainly funded by the California Association of Realtors and the California Apartment Affiliation.

Adverse mailers and texts are definitely not new in Silicon Valley, but those despatched out by the PAC have made waves on social media.

In a recent mailer, the PAC describes Lee as “playing with monkeys and Minecraft at work — not fixing challenges,” referring to a preferred video match Lee streamed himself playing. It also calls Lee a politician as a substitute of a Democrat—which was used to describe his opponents Kansen Chu, who served in the Assembly ahead of, and Fremont Metropolis Councilmember Teresa Keng. Lee is a lifelong Democrat.

“It’s so odd,” Lee advised San José Highlight. “They just want to cause chaos, spreading misinformation, and frankly, these are some of the dirtiest strategies that people today switch off from democracy.”

So did the realtors go “he life with his mom!” and anyone said “yeah, which is superior plenty of, print it” pic.twitter.com/Kf1uwuTHIW

— Lloyd Alaban (@lloydalaban) June 2, 2022

The mailer also details out that Lee lives at property with mom, which according to the state lawmaker is prevalent for young grownups in his district because of financial necessity. He reported it’s occasion why he is “so vigorously professional-housing.”

Lee said the PAC has long gone higher than and outside of to mislead voters and discredit the perform he has completed throughout his initial expression in the state Legislature because they do not like his guidance of economical housing and other progressive stances. Lee is chair of the Decide on Committee on Social Housing, and just very last week his monthly bill on social housing handed out of the Assembly floor and is heading to the Senate.

“This is an unusually large total of interest they’re placing on me because they are attempting to uphold the status quo,” Lee said. “They just cannot get me so they are trying to split me.”

A Santa Clara County Affiliation of Realtors representative mentioned the team does not make endorsements at the point out degree, but endorsed additional moderate small business-leaning candidates in the county like mayoral candidate and San Jose Councilmember Matt Mahan, county supervisor candidate Johnny Khamis and San Jose District 3 City Council candidates Joanna Rauh and Irene Smith.

“Candidates that aid (the association’s) mission of advertising and marketing and safeguarding non-public assets legal rights have acquired endorsements,” President Lisa Faria told San José Spotlight. “As for statewide races, conclusions to assistance candidates are manufactured at the condition stage by the California Affiliation of Realtors.”

The California Affiliation of Realtors and the California Apartment Association did not respond to requests for remark.

Contact Jana Kadah at [email protected] or @Jana_Kadah on Twitter.